Your Friendly Neighborhood Music Critic

For starters, I can’t stand Meek Mill. He’s a homophobic disgrace who starts fights with everyone and loses them all. His feud with Drake made him look like a petty like kid and his feud with The Game basically put him in the ground as far I’m concerned. Here on DC4 he tries to take on “On Fortuna” on the first track, something that 3D Na’tee had done better before him earlier this year, but it’s not all awful. There’s some okay songs on here like “Blessed Up” or “Blue Notes,” and this is by far his best project yet, but ultimately Meek still has yet to stand out with a unique style or even really impress me.

I’ve never been a huge Jeezy fan except for the uncharacteristically amazing “I Do (feat. Jay-Z & André 3000),” but with Trap or Die 3, the biggest question is if there’s even a place in rap for Jeezy’s old-school trap. I’d be lying if I said that every song on Trap or Die 3 didn’t sound exactly the same, as Jeezy’s hustlers anthems just drone on for 16 tracks. Not even a Lil Wayne feature or a posthumous Bankroll Fresh verse could save this mixtape from the relentless mundane. Last year’s Church in the Streets was a little more promising than what’s presented here, so maybe next year’s potential Snow Season harks back to a more hip-hop influenced Jeezy than the boring trap Jeezy.

I don’t remember where I first heard of Nick Grant, maybe at the 2016 BET Award Cyphers, but I remember looking him up afterwards and finding some song called “Get Up” that I didn’t know what to make of. One of the countless artists (Common, Rick Ross, Kaytranada) to be inspired by Solange’s A Seat at the Table however, Nick added a verse to four of the standout tracks from the record. Surprisingly, his verses were very poignant and real and I hope to hear more like this from him in the future.